Cancer is a leading cause of death in developed countries. Despite continuing advances in diagnosis and treatment regimens, most existing treatment methods have undesirable side effects and limited efficacy. Treatment of cancer is complicated by the variety of mechanisms involved in the formation and metastasis of tumors. Many of them are still not well understood. Chemotherapy is a major option for the first-line treatment in cancers such as leukemia and a second-line treatment for cancers such as refractory solid tumors.
Most current anticancer drugs are small molecule chemicals, which need to be administered into patients via a parenteral infusion. Clinical complications with the parenteral administrations have been documented and thus extra cares and cost for hospitalization are essential. Recent efforts in the discovery of anticancer drugs have been focused on finding oral composition containing active anticancer agents. N-(3-methylisothiazol-5-yl)-2-[1-(3-methylisoxazol-5-ylmethyl)-1H-indol-3-yl]-2-oxoacetamide and its analogues have been recently discovered as potent anticancer agents, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,903,104, whose content is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.